Canadian TV newswoman Paula Newton

Paula Newton is part of CNN's presence in the Great White North.

After working as a reporter for CTV in Canada for twelve years - 1993 to 2005 - she became an international correspondent for the Cable News Network, and she is based in Ottawa, Canada's capital.

At CTV, Ms. Newton was an anchor for the morning show "Canada AM,"  as well as CTV's Moscow bureau chief. At CNN, she has been seen doing such shows as "CNN Today," "Inside the Middle East," and "World News Europe."  She has also served as CNN's London-based international security correspondent. 

She got her start as an anchor and as a reporter for CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario.

Actress Mary McDonnell

Mary McDonnell got her breakthrough in the epic frontier movie Dances With Wolves, as the daughter of American settlers adopted and raised by Sioux Indians.  Her character, called Stands With a Fist for her defiance, enters into a relationship with Kevin Costner's Lieutenant Dunbar, assigned at Army fort on the frontier. 

She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance, and she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Passion Fish, in which she played a daytime serial actress paralyzed after being struck by a taxi.  Among are other notable films are Grand Canyon and Donnie Darko. 

In 2003, Mary McDonnell starred in the cable TV miniseries "Battlestar Galactica," based on the late-seventies ABC science fiction series of the same name, as Laura Roslin, the President of the Twelve Colonies. She reprised the role in a subsequent weekly "Battlestar Galactica" series, which ran from 2004 to 2009. From there she played a Los Angeles police captain in the TNT series "The Closer."

There's nothing Mary McDonnell can't do. :-) 

Actress Eva LaRue

Eva LaRue is an actress who has appeared primarily on American television.

She's best known for playing Dr. Maria Santos Grey on the ABC daytime serial "All My Children" three separate times, but prime-time TV viewers know her from her role as investigator Natalia Boa Vista on CBS's "CSI: Miami."

She's appeared in a few small movies that were released theatrically, but she's mostly done TV movies, including the Anneette Funicello biopic A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, in which she played the famous, iconic Mouseketeer.

A multicultural American in the truest sense of the term, Eva LaRue has French, Puerto Rican, Dutch, and Scottish heritage.

Fun fact #1:  She was married to onetime "Family Feud" host John O'Hurley for two years.

Fun fact #2: She's a third cousin to Jane Fonda. 

Newswoman Hoda Kotb

There aren't that many Arab-Americans in broadcast journalism, but, among them, Hoda Kotb may be the most visible of them all.

Born to Egyptian immigrants in Oklahoma and raised in West Virginia, Hoda Kotb began her journalism career at, appropriately enough, CBS News' Cairo bureau when she was 22.  After stints as a general assignment reporter and anchor in stations across the Midwest and the South, Ms. Kotb went to NBC. She's been a reporter on the network's "Dateline NBC" news magazine since 1998, and she hosted the weekly syndicated series "Your Total Health" for three years (2004 to 2007).     

Since 2007, Hoda Kotb has co-hosted the fourth hour of NBC's long-running (and now long) "Today" show.  Her co-host?  Sorry, I have trouble remembering her name! ;-)     

Model Kerry Jewitt

Kerry Jewitt is a model from the 1980s.

She was primarily active in the earlier half of that decade, and she was affiliated with the Zoli agency.

Broadcaster Lynsey Hipgrave

Lynsey Hipgrave is an English broadcaster. She began in radio, but, as you can plainly see, it was only a matter of time before she made it to television. :-)

Ms. Hipgrave was on the morning show of local commercial station in Manchester, England and was later a travel reporter on BBC Radio 5 before she became a sportscaster for al-Jazeera's English-language Sports + 3 channel. Evbentually she made it to BBC Television, where she did soccer commentary, including commentary on the World Cup.  For the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, she joined ESPN for its U.S.-based coverage.

If she didn't get Americans interested in soccer, nothing will. :-D   

Yasmine Guenancia Without Makeup

Having just seen pictures of a ravishing Yasmine Guenancia, you, cynical visitor to this blog that you are, might think she doesn't look attractive without makeup.  "Oh sure," you're thinking, "any woman can look great with lipstick and rouge, but how pretty is she without all that?"

Well, here's a photo of Yasmine without makeup, taken from a beauty editorial in the February 1981 issue of Cosmopolitan.

There, I thought that would quiet you down.

I suppose I could show the picture of Yasmine with makeup from the same editorial, but I'll save that for later. Quite frankly, Yasmine Sokal Guenancia doesn't need makeup any more than rocky road ice cream needs chocolate sauce.  Like so many other women featured on this blog, she makes herself more beautiful when she removes her lipstick and rouge and "all that."  :-)

Model Yasmine Guenancia

Yasmine Guenancia has led a full life, with a good deal of that fullness from before she even became a model.

Born Yasmine Sokal in Germany, she traveled a lot as a little girl, and she lived in India for a year to study yoga and miniature painting. She came to the United States to study at New York University, and started modeling to pay for her tuition. She quickly rose to the top of the modeling scene, and what started as a sideline became her career.

She did numerous fashion editorials and appeared on the covers of Harper's Bazaar and Redbook, among other fashion and women's magazines, as well as ads for Coty.  She was primarily represented by the Elite and Ellen Harth agencies, with a brief intermezzo at Paris Planning Women in Paris in 1983.

In 1985 Yasmine married Georges Guenancia, co-owner of the Cafe Un Deux Trois in Manhattan (so named because its address is 123 West 44th Street), and for several years she founded and ran the SoHo children's clothing store Bebe Thompson (so named because "bebe" is French for "child," and the store was on Thompson Street), as well as siring a daughter and a son.  Today, Yasmine is a real estate agent in Westchester County, New York, and even though she doesn't model anymore, she's still beautiful, as evidenced by this 2014 photo of Yasmine with fellow modeling legend (and fellow real estate agent) Kim Charlton on the left and fellow modeling legend Dawn Gallagher on the right at a models' reunion party. 

Oh yeah, this picture was taken at Cafe Un Deux Trois.  I ought to know.  I'm the one who took it. ;-) 

CNBC reporter Kelly Evans

Kelly Evans started out as a print business reporter, at the Wall Street Journal, in 2007.  Since moving to television, though, her journalism career has really taken off.   

As soon as she joined CNBC in 2012 and went to the channel's London bureau, she became a favorite anchorwoman among guys who were definitely not interested in the value of the pound sterling against the dollar.  

Her career got a big boost in 2013 when she became a host of CNBC's "Closing Bell," which airs in concert with the end of trading at the New York Stock Exchange.   

Actress Alexandra Daddario

Alexandra Daddario is another young actress drawing a lot of attention.

She's best known for playing Annabeth Chase, the demigoddess daughter of the goddess of wisdom Athena and a mortal father, in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians movies based on the children's adventure books of the eponymously titled series, which involve demigods (along with Percy and Annabeth in contemporary stories) based on ancient Greek mythology.   

In between the Percy Jackson movies, Alexandra Daddario has starred in everything from small movies like The Squid and the Whale, about two young brothers dealing with their parents' divorce, to horror movies such as Bereavement.   She also played Rachel, a receptionist at Adam and Crosby's recording studio, in a few episodes of the TV series "Parenthood," making things uncomfortable for Adam (Peter Krause) when she kissed him.  

Model Kim Charlton

Kim Charlton is another model from the glory days of fashion and beauty modeling, i.e., the 1980s.

The Pacific Northwest native joined the Elite agency, and her career took off quickly.  She did everything: print ads, fashion shows, television ads, catalogs, and editorial pages, with a few magazine covers to boot.  The list of the photographers she worked with reads like a who's who of fashion photography: George Harrell, Horst P. Horst, Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Marco Glaviano and Helmut Newton.   That is, just about everyone. :-)

Today, Kim Charlton is a real estate agent in Westchester County, New York . . . although, as the recent photo above indicates, she could still be a model today if she wanted to be. :-)    

Actress/model Marisa Berenson

Marisa Berenson is one of those women who's been able to distinguish herself as an actress and as a model.

The daughter of American career diplomat Robert Berenson and a second cousin once removed of art expert Bernard Berenson, as well as the granddaughter of Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, Marisa Berenson came from a rather regal pedigree that prepared her for the world of high fashion and high cinematic art.

After a successful modeling career in the 1960s, she appeared in some pretty classy movies, playing the wife of Gustav von Aschenbach's wife in Luchino Visconti's 1971 movie Death in Venice, Jewish department store heiress Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film version of the musical Cabaret, and Lady Lyndon in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 movie Barry Lyndon.  More recently, she played textile-manufacturing matriarch Allegra Recchi in the 2009 Italian movie I Am Love, which also starred Tilda Swinton. 

Her sister Berinthia, who married actor Anthony Perkins, also became an actress and model, as well as a photographer, but Berinthia "Berry" Berenson is sadly remembered for another reason; she was on the jet airliner that al-Qaeda suicide hijackers flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  Marisa, coincidentally, was flying from Paris to New York that day, and her plane was diverted to Canada.  Of Berry's death, she said, "I have hope and tremendous faith. I think that's what gets you through life . . . through tragedies is when you have faith."

Fashion model and Webzine founder Julie Anderson

It's easy to look at a top model like Julie Anderson and see just another beautiful woman.

After all, this 1989 photo from an ad for Escada is certainly stunning, and the photo of her below, showing her in a tank-top swimsuit, shows her ability to strike an arresting pose.

But since her modeling career, Julie Anderson has turned to journalism.  She founded Feminine Collective, an online magazine with insightful, thoguht-provoking articles form women and men who are interested in getting intelligent voices to break through the clutter of the many Web sites and online magazines out in cyberspace. 

Go to her magazine here.  

July 2014: The Latest Numbers

I have, as of this midway point in 2014, posted pictures of 816 different women, the last sixteen subjects having been the honorees in my third series devoted to athletes.

As for the top ten posts . . .  well, there hasn't been any change there.  The ten most popular posts as of this writing are the same as they were in April 2014, so I won't waste my time featuring a table of statistics.  The raw numbers - the sheer amount of pageviews these posts have gotten - have mostly remained static, anyway.  To see who's in the top ten, I invite you to look again at  the most recent statistical table from April 23 of this year.  Just click here.  

I do however, have one interesting statistic to share with you.  I noted that my initial post of Italian fashion model Alda Balestra was easily my most popular post of late, with a post of AccuWeather.com personality Stef Davis behind it.  Now Stef Davis is at 408 pageviews - far ahead of the 282 views for my first post of Alda Baelstra.  How do  I explain that?  I don't.  Although Stef Davis is an obscure fiugure, she's proven to be more popular than any of the women I've posted any pictures of for the first time in 2014.

So, you might be wondering, where do the people who visit this blog come from?  A lot of places, it turns out, as measured by Blogger.com.  Below is a list of  pageviews by countries, showing the ten nations from which I get the most traffic.  You can click on it to see it better.

As you can see, most of the viewers are American, but there are a lot of British viewers as well, along with sizable numbers from other industrialized countries.  Brazil is the only so-called "developing" country here, and, lo and behold, there's Poland right behind it.  I don't think it's an accident that the women I've featured here are from most of these countries . . . in fact, Poland is the only country here that I haven't featured anyone from (unless you count Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, a Polish ethnic).  I'll have to remedy that. Paradoxically,  I have featured women from the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, but none of them are on this list.        

Right.  I'll be back shortly with a new A-Z round and my 817th woman.  Stay tuned. :-)